Sunday, September 01, 2013

Obama following Cameron's lead? Are you having a Larf?

The United States is the only undisputed SuperPower these days. The idea that they need to take their lead from an ill-governed, broke and marginalised Britain is absurd. The idea that the President when grappling with a major decision says "What would David Cameron do" is preposterous. The best the Prome Minister can hope for is that Obama actually remembers his name correctly! So far so good on that one.

The Anglo-American alliance exists in NATO , but that's about it. It is not a bilateral agreement at all but a nostalgic memory of a time when it existed and a time when it needed to. Beyond NATO Obama has been explicit that he wants the UK to remain a member of the EU and become more active as such. This is, of course, because the military precedent of NATO (European powers working with the US) is a good one for the same approach on mainly economic matters. In years to come the trend towards the US dealing with Europe collectively rather than individual states bilaterally will accelerate.

The idea of the "Anglosphere" touted again by the likes of Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell is laughable. Like the anachronistic "Commonwealth" it harps back to a distant age when English speakers could carve up the world and trounce Johnny Foreigner. The Queen may be Head of the Commonwealth and I'm sure its members enjoy the occasional pseudo-Imperial pantomimes it brings. But they don't take it seriously as having any true significance - and the ill-defined "Anglosphere" is the same.